I M M O B I L I S M | a labor of love lost and found (2010-2020)

I wrote these words a long time ago.

Driver: An hour?? (se’a?)

… The French Mandate period in Lebanon, between 1920 and 1942, was an important era of urban planning in the region. The French were determined to pull Lebanon out of the backwardness that the Ottomons had left it in. They attempted to apply European development concepts and ideals, through the implementation of grandiose yet mostly unattainable master plans. They succeeded more in reforming institutional structure, and the only portions of the plans built were Star Square, which required the destruction of a large portion of downtown Beirut, and the grand seaboard Avenue de Paris, or the “Corniche” as it is commonly called. What is significant about this period in terms of transportation is that it heralded and responded to the era of the automobile. The master plans included creating massive avenues for the ease of automobility. Much of the infrastructure of these plans maintained momentum into the current reconstruction process, such as completion of the ring road around Downtown. Public outcry led to more context-sensitive avenues Downtown, however other freeway projects within the Beirut Metropolitan Region (BMR) have been given new life in the greater Beirut Transportation Plan (GBTP) completed in 1995 and the Beirut Urban Transport Project (BUTP) plan of 2000, both for the Council for Development and Reconstruction. As the post- World War II era saw a major increase in automobile traffic, the electric tramway began to be perceived as obstructions to traffic flow, at least by auto drivers, rather than the traffic itself. They were removed from service and the tracks paved over in the early 1960s. The railroads lasted until the late 1960s with minimal service to heavy industry continuing to the mid-1970s. With the onslaught of fighting in 1975, this service discontinued as well. …

I was forced to adapt my research design during my fieldwork, which stretched over a six month period (January - June 2013). In order to capture how my field encounters encouraged me to rethink some fundamental methodological assumptions I had before leaving to Beirut, this chapter begins with a short section on my preliminary research design and a brief discussion of some of the problems I encounters that forced me to rethink the design. The chapter will end with a section on the methods I settled on and how, by the end of my fieldwork period, I began to see the developments in my research design as an extension of some of the concerns raised in my literature review.

I wrote these words in secret, after dark, a long time ago. I hesitated when writing these words.